“Yet surely,—‘hitherto He has helped us’—Look at beginning of this book,—or stronger still look back some 17 years and see how the light has arisen out of darkness,—and shall it not grow and grow.
I fully believe ‘God is very merciful to those who suffer young’[young’]. How much harder the other way.
And much to be thankful for in health. No neuralgia,—very great return of brain power....
Who can look forward?—who dare plan?
Domine dirige nos!”
CHAPTER II
LAST ILLNESS OF MRS. JEX-BLAKE
So far S. J.-B.’s success in Edinburgh had been on the whole greater than most of her friends had anticipated. The experiment could never have been made, had not Mrs. Jex-Blake agreed to spend her winters in Edinburgh. S. J.-B. was a good deal blamed by other members of the family for urging this arrangement; but it must be borne in mind that although Mrs. Jex-Blake was in fairly good general health, she was subject to sudden alarming attacks of illness which had repeatedly brought her daughter hundreds of miles in hot haste to the sick bed, regardless of the studies, or the still more important affairs she was leaving behind.
Modern methods would have grappled with the illness at its source long before the patient had reached her present age, and a radical cure might have restored her to perfect health: as it was she lay under a sword of Damocles, and was regarded as a more delicate woman than she really was.
It was impossible for S. J.-B. to embark on medical practice under these conditions; so the Sussex Square house was given up, and the old lady—who elected to have her own ménage—divided her time between her daughter in Edinburgh and her son at Rugby.
“You have always been different to me from my other children,” she said to S. J.-B.; and, if she spoke with a consciousness of the sword in her heart, the words were mainly a tribute to her younger daughter’s untiring devotion, and remained in later days the source of comfort they were meant to be.